As the saga of the House Speaker's race continues, it's obvious that this Republican House majority is more dysfunctional than at any time in history. This week was supposed to yield a new crop of candidates, among them at least one or two who could bring about a consensus among the moderates (sic) who hail from Biden districts, the institutionalists who allegedly care about maintaining the U.S. system of government and the nihilists who just want to blow everything up. It's not going well.
There have been a number of shifting demands from these various factions but we now know that the one inviolate criterion is that any new speaker must be an election denier. On Tuesday, their leader Donald Trump made it very clear that he will not allow anyone who has ever crossed him in that way to have the gavel. So when Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who voted to certify the election on January 6, was nominated for the job, Trump trashed him on Truth Social for failing to understand "the Power of the Trump Endorsement." He then reportedly got on the phone with members to make his wishes known. Within the hour Trump reportedly told a confidante of Emmer, “he’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”
